Anritsu Enhances its CMA 3000 All-in-one Field Tester

Anritsu A/S, a subsidiary of Anritsu Corporation, a global provider of operational support solutions for advanced and converged networks, announced today the availability of new Voice over IP (VoIP) test options for the all-round and easy-to-use CMA 3000 field tester.

For VoIP testing the instrument can establish a call and answer incoming calls. By connecting an analogue phone to the CMA 3000 the user can make a conversation with the called/calling party. Statistics collected during the call will inform the user on the performance of the communication line used for the call. Based on this an add-on option can present voice quality information in terms of Mean Opinion Score (MOS) and R-factor values for one call at the time.

The VoIP options for the CMA 3000 work with the Ethernet test interface options for the instrument:

To make a realistic test case the instrument can generate/receive up to 8 calls simultaneously. These calls can be made on one or both test ports in the Ethernet option. If the instrument is also equipped with the Ethernet Multistream option, each of the 8 calls can be assigned to a stream, for instance allowing individual configuration of priority for the calls.

Thanks to the VoIP call emulation capability the user can quickly verify the connectivity through the network. The voice quality measurement option makes it straight-forward to get information on the quality of the connection as it will be perceived by the VoIP users.

Having a CMA 3000 equipped with VoIP and Ethernet options the field technician can use the same instrument for testing the new VoIP services and the basic Ethernet transport system. By installing other options legacy technologies that still need to be kept operational (like SDH, ATM and E1/E3) can also be tested. Hereby the field technician is well equipped to solve the problems in the access network.

The wide deployment of VoIP makes it essential for field technicians to have a tool that can test VoIP connections. When testing VoIP first of all connectivity must be checked. Once this is done, verification of the quality is essential, said Ole Soerensen, Product Manager, Anritsu A/S. Therefore it is important for field technicians installing and maintaining these types of connections to have a universal tool like the CMA 3000 to test VoIP together with all the other technologies they have to take care of.